English

No “Stolpersteine”? It has become a societal and political consensus to commemorate the Holocaust and the victims of the NS regime. However, the appropriate format is highly debated.[1] This is also the case in the debate about the Stolpersteine project in Munich. Nonetheless, there is a multifaceted remembrance culture in the capital of Bavaria.

English

Times of crisis are productive times for the humanities. During the oil crisis in 1973, at the very latest, the western world’s certainty about the future began to fade and was gradually replaced by a sense of history that enabled the discipline of history didactics to develop. In a similar fashion, we should welcome the current global and European crises as opportunities to learn and to add historically based directional options to our rusty political thinking.

Migration forces democracy to learn

The substantial migration events of the past months and the coming years will alter standards of living in Germany and Europe. Naturally, those who emigrate permanently from Africa or Asia are obliged to develop an appropriate attitude towards the new, prevailing local values and legal systems and, if necessary, to learn about democracy.

English

Fifteen years after the publication of the PISA study, the time is ripe for drawing conclusions and enquiring into the character and distinctive features of the subsequent debate on the didactics of history. Some German educationalists, teachers, and curriculum planners have displayed an alarming lack of knowledge about the theory of history. The past forty years of discourse on the theory of history have not had any impact on them.

Obscuring Terminology and Idler’s Vocabulary

Numerous texts on the didactics of history are permeated with stylish jargon that has nothing to do with the established terminology of the theory of history.

Do you know the country’s memorial foundations for outstanding German statesmen [Politikergedenkstiftungen]? One of them or even all of them? Sometimes it is hard to imagine that the nationally funded German memorial landscape might include more than just …

English

Do you know the country’s memorial foundations for outstanding German statesmen [Politikergedenkstiftungen]? One of them or even all of them? Sometimes it is hard to imagine that the nationally funded German memorial landscape might include more than just memorials for National Socialism and GDR. But, then, there are also museums and memorials for the republic and democracy. Amongst those, memorial foundations for statesmen play a very special role. And very slowly, these foundations are becoming more and more meaningful for German public memory in the course of increasing professionalisation and popularisation.

While the German President, Joachim Gauck, is giving Turkey unsolicited suggestions about how to deal with the Armenian genocide, the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, in her speech on the 70th anniversary of the

English

While the German President, Joachim Gauck, is giving Turkey unsolicited suggestions about how to deal with the Armenian genocide,[1] the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, in her speech on the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Dachau concentration camp excludes the remembrance of the Romani people and of the “antisocial” members of society persecuted and murdered during the Nazi regime by not mentioning these groups of victims.[2] This demonstrates that we, in Germany, need Gauck’s suggestions as much as Turkey does, and I accept them and use the term “seizure of power” (Machtergreifung) to think about how we talk about our history.

Language usage rules and horror

It seems to me, in my unsystematic, non-representative day-to-day perceptions, that language usage rules for the past are less controversial than those for the present, although every child knows that understanding the past defines the present. An example of how both the understanding of the past and its effects on the present can correspondingly change is provided by the introduction, in 1949, of the fundamental right to asylum in Germany as a consequence of the Holocaust, and its abolition, in 1992, two years after reunification[3] with the GDR. To be brief, I recently read a newspaper article in which the term “seizure of power”, without speech marks, was used in the same way[4] as it had been used up until about 30 years ago. I was appalled. A search with Google revealed that the term is still common usage.

Following the irreparable destruction of the equestrian statue depicting Wilhelm I at the Deutsches Eck (German Corner) in Koblenz, a national flag, mounted on the abandoned torso, was located there from 1953 till 1993. …

English

Following the irreparable destruction of the equestrian statue depicting Wilhelm I at the Deutsches Eck (German Corner) in Koblenz, a national flag, mounted on the abandoned torso, was located there from 1953 till 1993. The memorial was a reminder of the German partition, which appeared to be temporarily insurmountable, at least in the contemporary opinion. The monument’s restoration after 1990 terminated its function as a memorial. Thus, the most prominent memorial site for Germany’s partition was lost. A scandal for Public History!

Digital data infrastructures for the arts and humanities are currently being developed within the framework of various projects in Germany and Europe. Among these projects, DARIAH (Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities) is one of the largest projects. And it is designed as a long-term project.[1] DARIAH focuses primarily on philology and history. But the project is open to other disciplines. So DARIAH is also conceptualizing a data infrastructure for archeology. The cooperation with other infrastructure projects (such as IANUS at the German Archaeological Institute – DAI) is a key component in the architecture of the digital data infrastructure for archaeologists.[2] Furthermore it should be taken into account the collaboration with the project CLARIN (Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure).[3] This data infrastructure project is geared to linguistic needs. Within the network of the different data infrastructure projects, DARIAH could be aimed to harmonize the national activities on the EU level. International data networks of archeology are desirable in related regions such as the North and Baltic Sea coast to go beyond existing administrative boundaries of research.

But what are the specific needs of archaeologists to a digital research data infrastructure? Is it even possible to implement a centralized research data infrastructure (that is accepted by the researchers) in the very heterogeneous landscape of archaeological sciences in Germany? Therefore, it seems very important right from the start of the project to involve as many partners as possible in the conception of the infrastructure. The structure of federal states in Germany did not enable the foundation of a national archaeological data service, such as in the Netherlands or the UK.[4] The political conditions are contrary to centralized efforts. Thus, a decentralized architecture of the data infrastructure represents a solution to the existing problem. The cooperative project with equal partners should bring together both: the research at the universities as well as at the national archives of administration. It makes mutually accessible the respective databases for all partners. Forthermore the DARIAH service will provide a redundant long-term binary data storage with sovereign rights of data privacy and security requirements.